NOAA-19

NOAA-19, known as NOAA-N' (NOAA-N Prime) before launch, was the last of the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) series of weather satellites. NOAA-19 was launched on 6 February 2009. NOAA-19 was in an afternoon Sun-synchronous orbit and was launched with the intention that it replace NOAA-18 as the prime afternoon spacecraft, which it did in June 2009.

The satellite was passivated and decommissioned on August 13, 2025 after experiencing a battery failure.

On 4 November 2008, NASA announced that the satellite had arrived at Vandenberg aboard a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy military transport aircraft. Installation of the payload fairing took place 27 January 2009 and the second stage propellant was loaded on 31 January 2009.

Several attempts were made to conduct the launch. The first attempt, 4 February 2009, was scrubbed after a failure was detected in a launch pad gaseous nitrogen pressurization system. The second attempt, 5 February 2009, was scrubbed after the failure of a payload fairing air conditioning compressor, which is also part of the ground support equipment at the launch pad.

The satellite was successfully launched at 10:22 UTC on 6 February 2009 aboard a Delta II flying in the 7320-10C configuration from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB).

NOAA-N Prime carries a suite of eight instruments that provides data for weather and climate predictions. Like its predecessors, NOAA-N Prime provides global images of clouds and surface features and vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature and humidity for use in numerical weather and ocean forecast models, as well as data on ozone distribution in the upper part of the atmosphere, and near-Earth space environments — information important for the marine, aviation, power generation, agriculture, and other communities. The NOAA-N Prime primary instruments — the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR/3), High Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS/4), and the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) — were all designed for a three-year mission. The Space Environment Monitor (SEM/2) is fitted to the satellite and is composed of Total Energy Detector (TED) and MEPED (Medium Energy Proton and Electron Detector). The Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Spectral Radiometer (SBUV/2) was designed for a two-year mission, and the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) instrument was designed for a five-year mission. NOAA-19 also hosts Cospas-Sarsat payloads.

The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer/3 (AVHRR/3) is the primary imaging system and consists of visible, near infrared (IR) and thermal IR channels. The AVHRR, built by ITT, observes vegetation, clouds, and the surface of bodies of water, shorelines, snow, aerosols and ice. The instrument has a scan mirror that continuously rotates and scans the Earth at six revolutions per second to provide continuous coverage.

The Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Radiometer/2 (SBUV/2) instrument is both an imager and a sounder. As an imager, it produces total column ozone maps. As a sounder, it obtains and measures the ozone distribution in the atmosphere as a function of altitude. The SBUV, built by Ball Aerospace, is a long-term monitoring device that takes global measurements and observes how elements in the atmosphere change over time. Each channel on the nadir-pointing SBUV detects a particular near-ultraviolet wavelength whose intensity depends on the ozone density at a particular height in the atmosphere. The SBUV includes a Cloud Cover Radiometer that provides information on the amount of cloud cover in an image and removes the effects of the clouds from the data.